My friend Lance Weiler has been working hard on a new project where creative people meetup and discuss the future of multi-platform story telling, open-source media making and cutting-edge technologies in the creative industries.

DIY Days will be in Philadelphia, happening on August 1st at University of the Arts. But if you’d like to get a jump start on the action, there will be a pre-party and creative meetup on July 8th.

The pre-party details:

Wednesday, July 8 :: 7-11pm @ Johnny Brenda’s
Presented by the WorkBook Project and PIFVA
$5 at the door or FREE for PIFVA members

Special performances by
* SCIENTISTS ARE THE NEW ROCKSTARS

* CHIEF WRECKEM’s ORGANS vs TURNTABLES

* Speed power points presentations about
the FUTURES OF ENTERTAINMENT.

* PLUS a number of targeted NETWORKING SESSIONS to help you meet others who are making creative work in PHILLY.

Recently, I discovered Atlas Obscura, “a compendium of this age’s wonders, curiosities, and esoterica.” It speaks to my heart:

The Atlas Obscura is a collaborative project with the goal of cataloging all of the singular, eccentric, bizarre, fantastical, and strange out-of-the-way places that get left out of traditional travel guidebooks and are ignored by the average tourist. If you’re looking for miniature cities, glass flowers, books bound in human skin, gigantic flaming holes in the ground, phallological museums, bone churches, balancing pagodas, or homes built entirely out of paper, the Atlas Obscura is where you’ll find them.

 
This guide is simply full of some of the most incredible stuff. For example, one of the entries in Pennsylvania, mere miles from where I went to high school, was totally unknown to me until now. How had I never heard of this place before!? It’s called The Sonorous Stones of Ringing Rocks Park, basically a field of musical, ringing boulders in the middle of the woods. Incredible.

[photo: David Hanauer]

Here in Philadelphia, you’ll find a number of odd spots, including the Shrine of Saint John Neuman. I’m going to have fun exploring (and contributing to!) this outstanding project. Lord Whimsy, you must be all over this already, yes?

I just got an email letting me know that my music video for The War on Drugs was accepted into the 17th Curtas Vila do Conde International Film Festival in Portugal! I’m excited to actually have a film IN a film festival instead of just projecting film all the time. Wish I could attend…

First, the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System in mass transit map style:

Update: Jackson West at Laughing Squid found the artist behind the map:

Boulder, CO artist Chris Yates created an abstract, London Tube-style map of Dwight Eisenhower’s Interstate highway system which you can buy as a print for $12 plus shipping.

(via Notcot, Amy Kathryn)

And then, sorta related – a graphic estimating how many years we’d have left on this planet given that we continue to consume resources at the rate we do today:

(via Caitlin Hill)

Be sure to check out our friends Ravens and Vultures who were kind enough to lend us their excellent music for our soundtrack.

My neighborhood hosted it’s 3rd annual arts festival this weekend. I’ve been saying this is my favorite day of the year in Fishtown, a day when I’m extra proud to live here and be part of such a vibrant and wild-spirited community. What promised to be a rainy affair turned out to break free of the showers and even give me a sunburn. It was lovely, as always.

A big part of the festival, for those of you who don’t know yet, is the ‘Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby’. I took lots of photos of the derby and here’s a video of some of the best sculptures in action:

No comment needed for this one. Just, wow.

(Hat tip, NewTeeVee Station!)

Audrey and I watched the lovely film Humboldt County the other night and I have to take a minute to share how much I adored this film. It is a touching portrait of a certain subculture in America I think is too often stereotyped. Gorgeous, well acted, subtle, yet powerful. Part of my loving this film spoke to my own conflicts between urban living and ‘dropping out’ and spending my days in some far off dream land, so if you’re anything like me in that regard chance are you’ll love this film, too.

Watch the trailer below.

A friend of mine (I can’t remember who now) told me about getting camping permits for the islands and spending a whole week there, lounging in hammocks and snorkeling in the crystal blue water. And camping passes are $5 a night. Apparently almost all of the visitors that go only stay for a day trip and return to Key West by evening, leaving the island empty and quiet. Sign. Me. Up. Who’s with me?

(thanks, Peg, for reminding me to blog about this!)

My pal Kasia just posted about this Criterion release of the classic experimental William Greaves film Symbiopsychotaxiplasm.

In his one-of-a-kind fiction/documentary hybrid Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One, director William Greaves presides over a beleaguered film crew in New York’s Central Park, leaving them to try to figure out what kind of movie they’re making. A couple enacts a break-up scenario over and over, a documentary crew films a crew filming the crew, locals wander casually into the frame: the project defies easy description. Yet this wildly innovative sixties counterculture landmark remains one of the most tightly focused and insightful movies ever made about making movies. Criterion presents this long-unreleased gem in a special two-disc edition, along with its sequel, Take 2 1/2, made thirty-five years later with executive producers Steven Soderbergh and Steve Buscemi.

I haven’t seen this yet, but I certainly want to soon! How gorgeous is that cover art, huh?

You might recall that last month I whipped together a lil’ video in order to apply for the Fiesta Movement – an innovative marketing effort by Ford that gave 100 entertaining and influential bloggers a new car to drive around for 6 months and share their thoughts and adventures with the world. Well, lucky for me, I got chosen – one of 4000+ applicants.

I spent a fantastic couple days up in New York City getting some information and training on the program. It does not suck to spend 24 hours with a group of people who are equally, if not more nerdy than me about blogging, Twitter and the Internet arts (shout out to my new friends Seth, Alexis, John, Sarah, Grace, Jody, Jill, Joe, Bliss, Eric and Alex). Here’s the first clip I just uploaded – an introduction to the car and a rainy training day at the racetrack.

There’s a bit more to it than simple videos and witty car quips. The best part of this is that Audrey and I are already planning some road trip adventures for this summer and we’ll be extra sure to make you some entertaining videos while we’re on the road.

My friend Hudson and his brother Michael are making a documentary film about their 93-year-old grandfather Alva B. Lines. Here’s a bit of their first trailer the put together based on interviews they filmed with him recently.

I’m certainly intrigued by the film, but I’m equally interested in the way that these fellas are promoting the project using social media marketing tactics (posting updates to a Twitter account, maintaining a production blog in lieu of a ‘coming soon’ splash page, etc). I’ve long been a proponent of indie artists taking full advantage of the tools the web has to offer in building your own audience by keeping them in the loop throughout the entire creative process. I love pointing out projects that ‘get it’ and are doing it right. Another documentary that has been really hitting home runs in this realm is my friends at Project Pedal and their film For Thousands of Miles.

Thought we’re only a few steps into producing our own documentary, Mable’s Murder (working title), Audrey and I certainly aim to do the same kind of audience building and promotion once we’re further along into production. By the way, it’s a pleasent coincidence that Hud and Michael are also exploring stories from our grandparent’s generation. We hope to follow their project closely and share their successes with you in the coming months.

My pal Jay at Arthur Magazine recently mentioned a book that’s being passed around amongst my friends here in Philly recently (indeed, I picked up a copy for Audrey’s birthday just last week).

It’s called The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City. Though we don’t have a lot of free space to plant a big garden at our place, we’re very interested in finding better ways to live both here in Philly and wherever the future might take us. I feel like this book will be a good guide with some enlightened ideas for better living.

Oh, and as any good author team worth their salt, Erik Knutzen and Kelly Coyne are blogging about urban sustainability issues topics, too. One recent post gives some resources on creating your own self-irrigating planters.

Might be a good buy for all ye urban dwellers out there, especially in places like Detroit where things are getting so bad, people seem to be buying abandon houses for $100 a pop! Sounds like it’s time for some ‘recolonization’ up that way, huh?

Audrey and I have been meaning to watch Buena Vista Social Club… and voila! Here it is:

So right this moment I’m listening to Last.fm wirelessly connected to my living room stereo system. How? By buying this nifty lil’ app called Airfoil from Rogue Amoeba, telling it to grab the audio from the Last.fm App, streaming it to my Apple AirPort Express wireless router which is connected via RCA cables to my living room stereo. Bing.